New Stuff And Old Stuff

The wonderful Brain Cox was on TV and stated that nothing is new and even the atoms making up our bodies have been other things before over the course of life on Earth so our arm may contain part of a plant that the first fish trod on as it left the Ocean and our left ear could contain some of the water which our tree dwelling ancestor peed out over a squirrel which is now in our little toe.  
All very mind bending i know to consider that we could be breathing in oxygen and drinking water that dinosaurs and ancient plants used millions of years ago but such is the circle of life that we eat plants and animals and their atoms become our bones, blood, and skin and when these atoms which make us will go back into the soil and air when we die to become new plants, animals or even part of a motorway pillar at some point in the far future.
He also said that at some point around 900,000 years ago 98.7% of the human population got wiped out due to extreme climate changes, severe droughts and dropping temperatures in Africa which caused extensive loss of vegetation and a sharp decline in the grazing animals that early humans relied on for survival, leaving just around 1,280 breeding individuals to keep us going and it took millennia before we got going again so while some species bounce back, others don’t, but we’re probably the first ones endangered because we did and then stupidly stuffed up the air, water and ground we need to live.  
All this got me thinking, if nothing is actually new and things are made from previous things why do we have a problem with waste because everything that goes to make more stuff is made from the other stuff we dug out from the ground such as coal which is a fossil fuel which means setting fire to dinosaurs.
With recycling we convert the raw materials of old into new stuff but there is still a good proportion of new things that we have to dispose of but if nothing is extra to what we started with, so why is the new stuff not being used to fill the holes we made digging out the stuff to make it.
We must have massive holes all over the place we can fill and the new stuff isn't going to weigh more or occupy more space than what we started with because it is the same stuff but then maybe my Cerebral Cortex is part made from atoms which were once a Conker Tree because i'm obviously missing something here.

Healey U Turn

When John Healey resigned as defence secretary in a blaze of righteous fury, he grandly declared that a cast-iron commitment to spend 3% of GDP on defence was the absolute minimum required to keep Britain safe in a perilous world.
Less than three months on, and now Chancellor under Andy Burnham where he is in control of the nation’s purse strings, he doesn't seem quite so keen on throwing billions more at the Department to spend on warfare and his first budget in October, he is to defer the target of spending 3% of GDP on defence to a later date 'due to fiscal constraints'.
Strange how being responsible for finding and distributing the money to all of the Government departments means that he won't be upping the military spending he was so desperate for a few weeks ago which led him to resign in disgust when it wasn't forthcoming from the former Chancellor, Rachel Reeves.
Maybe, with a budget already of £65.4 billion to spend, he didn't really need the money after all because once he was in the position to give it and deemed absolutely necessary, he hasn't.

Leaving On A Jet Plane

It seems that Donald Trump will not be confirmed as a pedophile until he is out of office by which time America will realise that many places and things in America will have the name of a notorious child sex offender on their buildings and rapidly change them such as the Palm Beach International Airport which has been renamed the President Donald J. Trump International Airport and given the three letter International airport code DJT.
You can now fly from Holguin in Cuba to Florida and your ticket will say HOG DJT or go from Florida to Gaya International Airport and your ticket will say DJT GAY.
Many long haul flights have stop overs so for example if you go from Palm Beach and stop off Sioux City and land at Kokkolain in Finland your ticket would state DJT SUX KOK.
For our holidays this year we are going on a whistle stop tour of the globe so we are starting off in Antsiranana, Madagascar and then it's on to Fresno California and over the Pacific to Fukishama in Japan and then down to Pendopo Airport in Talang Gudang Indonesia and then finally over to West Palm Beach Florida which is a lot on one ticket, DIE FAT FUK PDO DJT.
Going to be a long trip but should be good.

Gonna Need A Bigger Tele

 
My iPhone camera is 48 Megapixels which is exactly three times that of the 16 Megapixel Hubble Telescope launched in 1990 which is taking photographs of the Cosmos for the education of mankind while i am using mine to take pictures of our cat so arguably not so important to warrant the high quality although it is 15MP less than the James Webb Telescope launched in 2021.
Now we have another camera telling the Universe to say Cheese because the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is on it's way beyond the Moon and that has a whopping 300 Megapixel camera onboard which would take some amazing cat pictures.
NASA are saying that the extremely wide angle high definition images of the universe from the telescope will be so vast that there's not a 4K TV on Earth capable of showing it all so i'm guessing that is next on the NASA to-do list because it is due to do a survey of our own Milky Way galaxy and find 20 billion stars so that's a really big screen required.
As well as the ultra-high definition camera equipment, it is also carrying the first active coronagraph to be used in space, which blocks out the bright light of a star so researchers can observe the Corona and see what that reveals.
The Roman Space Telescope is named after NASA's first female chief astronomer Nancy Grace Roman who was the main advocate of telescopes in Space and convinced Congress to fund one which led to the Hubble and later telescopes queuing up on the other side of the Moon, well away from the light of the Earth and it's satellite.  
The journey to its place which will keep it constantly on the night side of the Earth is an estimated 90 days and the telescope’s first images are expected in early 2027 which doesn't give them much time to invent the television to look at them on so that's your next job eggheads.

You Can Relax Olympians

This weekend saw the 2nd World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing and after years of scientists teaching robots to play sports, they still suck at it.
That said, in the 100-meter sprint a humanoid robot achieved a result of 9.39 seconds, beating the human record of 9.58 seconds set by Jamaican athlete Bolt in 2009 but after completing the course it ran into a wall and exploded which Usain never did and in a standing high jump one was able to reach 2.88 meters which is well above the 2.45 meters best result by one of us meat bags with a run up.
In the other events i am glad to say they failed miserably and one scientist explained that robots are great when they have one instruction to follow but when they are asked to do more, they get confused and either fall over figuratively and in some cases physically.
The two sports they do excel at is chess and table tennis which they regularly whup our arses at but as most sports rely on more than one thing happening at the same time, our Olympians are not in danger of being replaced just yet. 

What's The Time Villain?

Weird how it's a word I use multiple times every day but it wasn't until yesterday that i found out what it actually means and why we say it.
The word is o'Clock and apparently it has nothing to do with the dial or ticking hands part of the clock to start with, it was the bell that told us what time it was.
According to a time historian, when mechanical clocks replaced sundials around the 1300's, they were named Clocc's from the Old French word for Bell as it was this which told them the time, ringing out on the hour alerting townsfolk so six chimes would mean it was six of the clocc, later Clock as the English bastardised the French word.
Over time the 'of the clock' part got shortened to 'O'Clock' and was cemented into the language in the 16th Century by Shakespeare in his plays and 'o'Clock' quickly replaced the longer phrase and so today we use a 14th-century word which means something different to what it does now which made me wonder, any other words from then we still use which actually mean something else?
According to Medievalists.net, there are plenty such as 'silly' which started out meaning 'blessed' or 'fortunate' and nice which was used to mean someone who was foolish or stupid, a villain was a farm worker and Hell was just a place with a cover over it while all females were wives regardless of marital status and Meat was any type of food.
If we ever manage to go time travelling, the 14th Century would be a minefield and it would probably be best just to stay quiet as telling someone to have a nice day could see you in the stocks with all types of rotten meat being thrown at you.  

Special Guest Blogger: Frederick Forsyth

People, bless their optimistic cotton socks, often asked about the "creative process." but i didnt write about feelings and fairies, I wrote about how a man, with sufficient ingenuity and a well-placed contact, might blow something up, or, more likely, prevent it from being blown up. My books weren’t born of artistic angst, they were born of a meticulous adherence to plausible reality and the pressing need to meet a deadline. One has bills to pay, after all.
Take The Day of the Jackal. Everyone goes on about it. The detail, the suspense! Frankly, I was just trying to write a believable story about a professional killer. I spent weeks researching French police methods, weapons, passports. Not because I’m some kind of literary martyr, but because I didn’t want some retired Gendarme writing me an angry letter pointing out the flaws in my fictional police cordon.
As for my life, it’s been a bit of a kaleidoscope. Pilot, journalist, spy  and then, rather unexpectedly, a best-selling novelist.
My younger self, clattering away on an old typewriter, probably wouldn’t have believed I’d still be writing decades later but then to be fair, my younger self was mostly concerned with finding a decent pint and not getting shot in some godforsaken corner of the world. Simpler times.
I did have some controversial views, like that time I vociferously supported Brexit The EU, bless their bureaucratic cotton socks, just didn't understand that some chaps prefer their tea, brewed exactly how they like it, without a thousand directives on the exact temperature of the water or the acceptable angle of the teabag. Common sense, you see. A rare commodity, it seems.
And then there's this climate change brouhaha. All this talk of the planet boiling, the ice caps melting, the end of days just around the corner, delivered with the grave pronouncements of a particularly gloomy vicar.
Now, I’m not saying it’s not getting a bit warmer, but the sky isn't falling, and frankly, I suspect the planet has seen a good deal worse than a few extra degrees. It's a rather resilient old thing, Earth. She's been through ice ages and volcanoes, and I suspect she'll manage perfectly well without us all running around in a panic, banning perfectly good cars and eating laboratory-grown steak.  
So, will histoerians mention the geopolitical thrillers or the fact that I thought leaving the EU was a perfectly sensible decision and that all this climate hysteria is a bit overblown? Probably both, knowing my luck.
Ultimately, I suppose, I hope they remember the stories. The ones where the good chaps, usually British, occasionally French, used their wits and courage to prevent some monstrous injustice. The ones where research was king, and a well-placed fact could be more devastating than a missile. The ones that, for a few hours at least, took people away from their own particular drizzles and worries, and plunged them into a world of genuine peril and cunning.
As for the rest of it, my opinions on the price of milk, the state of modern manners, or indeed, the baffling complexities of the European fishing policy well, those are just the ramblings of an old chap who’s seen a bit too much of the world to take much of it seriously anymore.

Too Much Money For Corrupt Politicians To Tackle Climate Change

With at least 675 confirmed deaths and 2,500 people missing following the devastation of Nepal caused by a glacier collapse due to global warming, Nepali Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal has called on the world to embark on: 'A global effort to tackle climate change'.
The first warnings that the CO2 emissions were damaging our environment came in 1824, an amazing 102 years ago, so it isn't as if it suddenly reared up unexpectedly but over the last century despite the warnings, we have carried on and even upped the damage so despite an overwhelming scientific consensus and increasingly visible ecological devastation, wealthy nations have consistently failed to implement the policies needed to halt climate change so you have to wonder why is that?
It could be that the leaders we have had over that period have been devastatingly incompetent (very much an option) but unfortunately I can think of other reasons.
There could be a fear that countries historically liable for causing the worst of the warming climate (USA, China, India, Germany, United Kingdom) could face admitting fault and open the floodgates to lawsuits and demands for climate reparations.
Due to burying heads in the sand and not doing it over time, the bill to transition away from fossil fuels would be immense and no Government wants to lose their grip on power by putting up tax to pay for it and have been happy to kick the can down the road to ensure their own short-term political survival.
All of the above is certainly in consideration but i would pin the blame squarely on lobbying by the high emitting industries.
Fossil fuel corporations, aviation giants and heavy manufacturers spend billions of dollars annually on lobbying, political campaign contributions and public relations campaigns designed to delay strict regulations, water down carbon taxes and even sow public doubt about climate science which unfortunately there are enough soft headed people around to believe it.
The administration of Donald Trump, who has rolled back over 100 environmental rules and regulations despite being the second worst polluter, received tens of millions from oil, gas and coal executives, alongside ultra-wealthy donors heavily invested in fossil fuels and they didn't pay this money out of the kindness of their hearts, hence the roll backs they literally paid for.
In the UK, the Conservative Party have received £3.5 million in political donations from fossil fuel interests, high-pollution industries and funders linked to climate science denial groups and have now pushed back against net zero have argued that they would roll back green policies.
Reform have received £2.5 million from those who would be affected by any change to environmental laws and are now actively promoting dangerous climate denial and dismissed the consensus on man-made climate change as: 'A con trick'.
With the devastation which environmentalists have been warning about since before i took an interest in the mid 80's now arriving, time is running out to avoid the worst of what Mother Nature has to throw at us and the people to blame are the ones who have taken money over saving the lives of the people on the planet and until we get proper leaders.
This is only the start but at least we know who to blame, 100 years of greedy, corrupt World Leaders so sorry Nepali Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal, a global effort to tackle climate change isn't going to happen anytime soon, too much money to be made by some to blatantly ignore it and instead just say how sad it is when 675 Nepalese souls are snuffed out by a collapsing glacier. 

Hope It Hurt Mladic

We can only hope that Bosnian War criminal, Ratko Mladic, died in absolute pain for his part in the Bosnian genocide in the 1990s.
Mladic was reported as terminally ill in July 2025 and tried to obtain compassionate release to die outside prison which was refused and when he then tried to secure agreement to be hospitalised outside the Hague, that was refused also.
Mladic slaughtered ten thousand Bosnian's and was known as the Butcher of Bosnia for the thousands of innocents he ordered killed and if there is a Hell, you can only hope he is being used as a test subject for his fellow Genocide committer, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, who will also arrive one day with his current death toll of around 95,000 and a 34th place ranking in the 'Who Has Killed The Most People In History' list between Vlad the Impaler (100,000) and the Central African Republican Jean-Bédel Bokassa (90,000).

Special Guest Blogger: Brian Wilson

It all started, as these things often do, in a garage. Not because we were cool, rebellious teenagers with leather jackets and a profound message to deliver. No, we were just three brothers, a cousin, and our friend Al Jardine, making a racket. That’s probably the most rock-and-roll part of our origin story. The rest was just trying to avoid hitting Dennis with his own drumsticks.
Then came the "brainstorm." Surfing. Hot rods. Girls. The quintessential California dream. The funny thing is, none of us were exactly beachy types. I mean, I liked the beach. From a safe distance. With a hot dog but Surfin' it was. And people loved it. They bought the records. They wanted more. So, we gave them more. "Surfin' Safari," "I Get Around," "California Girls." Lots of songs about things we barely did, but made sound like the greatest thing on Earth. It was genius, really. A brilliant marketing scheme disguised as pop music. Who knew? Not us, probably.
Then things got... interesting. My brain, you see, it wasn't content with just three chords and a catchy chorus. My brain was like a mischievous toddler who discovered the entire toy chest and decided to throw everything in the air, just to see what kind of glorious mess it would make. I started hearing
sounds no one else seemed to hear. Layers. Textures. It was all there, in my head, shimmering and begging to be put on tape.
Schizoaffective disorder and mild bipolar disorder they called it although the bucketfuls of LSD, cocaine and marijuana probably didn't help and after a nervous breakdown, I withdrew from regular concert touring to concentrate on songwriting and recording.
This is where Pet Sounds comes in. Everyone talks about Pet Sounds but it nearly broke me.  I spent so much time in the studio, conducting my little orchestra of session musicians, trying to translate the chaos in my head into something tangible, something beautiful. I was trying to capture the feeling of watching a sunset while simultaneously experiencing the dread of a wormhole opening in my living room. You know, everyday stuff.
The guys, my bandmates, they weren't always on board. Mike, bless him, was usually the first to raise an eyebrow but I just knew. I felt it. It was the sound of something new. Something pure. And a lot of very complex chords.
I did try to stop the drugs but by then I was hanging out with people like Alice Cooper and Iggy Pop so that's like being a vegetarian while living in McDonald's.
And then Smile. That album was going to be my grand opus. It was going to be the sound of God, as channeled through my slightly frazzled brain. Or maybe just a really confused Brian. We had fire engines and horse whinnies and a track called "Barnyard" that sounded exactly like what you’d expect.
My brain, you see, was always been a busy place. Like a hyperactive amusement park, but all the rides are playing different music simultaneously, and the clown is also trying to explain quantum physics. Sometimes it's a symphony, sometimes it's just a lot of honking and shouting. For a while there, it
was mostly shouting. Loud, insistent voices, telling me all sorts of interesting and occasionally terrifying things. It made trying to write a simple pop song quite the adventure.
Through it all, the drugs, the suicide attempts, the mental hospital visits, the music kept coming. Sometimes it was a trickle, sometimes a flood.
Sometimes it was just a strange little tune that I'd hum to myself for three days straight until it finally found its way onto a piano.
My brain was finally silenced after contracting COVID and the later effects of that which was respiratory problems but I wrote a bunch of songs about cars and girls and surfing, a few albums that apparently changed the world, a good noise and I managed to put a smile on a few faces along the way
even if my own face was often contorted in a mixture of concentration and sheer bewilderment most of the time.

Special Guest Blogger: Dolly Parton

Hello there, darlin’, It’s your old pal Dolly and i'm here sitting in Gods waiting Room (thank you Cancer) and thinking back on the mountain of hairspray and glitter that could probably be seen from the International Space Station, and I'm thinking, how on earth did a little girl from the dirt-poor mountains of Tennessee end up so goddam' famous?
At age 18, I packed a suitcase, a guitar, and a few weeks’ worth of canned beans and drove to Nashville, the city with the neon honky‑tonk signs and that was the start of a beautiful ride with an aim to make the world a little brighter, just like my stage outfits.
Now, I know some of you might only know me because your mama played 9 to 5 while vacuuming on a Saturday morning, or crying into your pillow to I Will Always Love You, the Whitney version obviously.
Speaking of that little tune, I wrote it as a dramatic farewell to my long-time musical partner Porter Wagoner but back in the day, the King himself, Mr. Elvis Presley, wanted to record my song but his Colonel manager said Elvis would get half the publishing rights so i said no thank you and boy, am I glad I did! Years later, Whitney Houston blew the roof off the world with her version in The Bodyguard. That song made me enough money that I could have bought Graceland lock, stock, and barrel so thanks, Whitney. I will always love you, indeed!
I’d written over 3,000 songs but I don't just want to be remembered for the high notes, the big hair, or the outfits because you see, I started out dirt poor. I’m talking twelve kids in a two bedroom cabin with a leaky roof kind of poor. We didn't have two nickels to rub together, but i said if I ever got in a position to help others, I was going to help.
That’s why, way back in 1988, we started helping local schoolchildren stay in school. Then, in 1995, I started the Imagination Library because I wanted kids to have books of their own and when disasters strike wildfires, hurricanes, floods, well, a Tennessee mountain girl never forgets where she came from.
I even tossed a million dollars at the Moderna vaccine research back in 2020 during the pandemic. Who knew my little ol' country songs would turn me into a vaccine-funding Rockefeller?
I wore heels that defied the laws of physics, and spread as much joy as I possibly could because at the end of the day, wigs tangle, makeup melts, applause fades but kindness is a rhinestone that never loses its sparkle.

You Can Close Your Eyes (For 7 Hours)

There is an advert on the TV which uses the song  'Lucky, Lucky, Lucky Me' to explain how the singer works eight hours, sleeps eight hours which leaves eight hours for fun and i have always assumed that eight hours of shut eye is some sort of scientific fact to allow our brains to do whatever brains do when we are sleeping, but turns out that the sweet spot is less than that.
A report by Sleep Specialists have narrowed it down to between 6 hours 24 minutes and 7 hours 48 minutes and anything more or less than that is linked to poorer brain, heart and immune health.
There is a gender factor because women need 15 to 20 minutes more sleep than men which i assume is due to ladies have bigger, more complex brains so we need those extra minutes and to be fair if length of sleep needed was due to how much brain there was to rearrange, i know some who could happily get by with a 10 minute nap but i'm no scientist so i may have made that bit up.   
The report does then go on to complicate things by saying that the actual correct amount of sleep varies depending on factors such as season, workload, stress, illness and safety but a rule of thumb is aim for about 7 hours sleep and you will be in the pink although the lyrics for that song may need to be rewritten because 8 hours kip is doing no favours to your brain, heart and immune system.    

USA No1 For No 2's

American's must feel like crying over what their President is doing to their weekly shopping bills but they maybe should hold back the tears because his latest tariffs on it's neighbour Canada would mean that wiping away those tears has just become much more expensive for them.
The nice North Americans hit back at the Tango Tyrants tariffs and Mark Carney, the Canadian Prime Minister, has vowed to match US tariffs dollar for dollar and unveiled a list of nearly 900 American goods that will face up to 50% and specifically mentioned 'toilet paper and face tissue stock' .
American consumers must not be feeling flushed with success that a trip to the bathroom is going to cost them 50% more because though American toilet paper and tissues are often made domestically, they rely heavily rely on lumber from Canada for the raw materials and the US imported $328m worth of toilet paper from Canada last year.
For some reason, the US accounts for more than 20% of global tissue consumption and the average American uses 141 rolls of toilet paper per year, making them No 1 for No 2's globally so maybe cut back on the fibre Americans because you got another 2 years of this mayhem before an adult takes over again.

Special Guest Blogger: Pope Francis

People looked at me and saw the white cassock, the skullcap and the heavy responsibility of 1.3 billion souls but before I was His Holiness, I was just Jorge from Buenos Aires, and let me tell you, the path from the streets of Buenos Aires to the chair of St. Peter is less of a straight line and more of a chaotic tango.
Long before I was hearing confessions in the Vatican, I was wearing a lab coat as a certified chemical technician and being a chemist taught me that everything is a reaction. When I talked about the environment i was looking at the Earth as a closed system. We’re all in the same test tube, my friends and the Bunsen burner is being turned up way too high.
People often forget the most glamorous part of my CV as nightclub bouncer. Yes, the Vicar of Christ used to spend his Friday nights folding his arms over his chest and telling guys in shiny shirts that they weren't getting in as they were not on the list.
In the club, you have to spot the troublemaker before they start throwing chairs. In the Vatican, the chairs are 500-year-old gilded mahogany, so the stakes are much higher.
Being a bouncer taught me about human nature. It taught me that everyone, the drunk kid in the alley and the billionaire in the velvet booth, is looking for the same thing but my final job was just a much larger version of that. Except instead of keeping people out of the club, I was trying to drag everyone in.
Living in Rome was a constant struggle, it is very hard to be the Universal Father when  San Lorenzo de Almagro is playing. I try to pray for everyone, but I think the Lord understands if 51% of my spiritual energy goes toward a winning goal in the 90th minute.
If history remembers me as the guy who spent too much time talking about the poor, I’m okay with that as I want people to look back and say, Remember Francis? He was the one who told us we didn't have to look like we were at a funeral to be holy.
I want to be remembered as the Pope who reminded the world that God is not a cosmic judge with a clipboard and I opened doors, making the Catholic Church more acceptable of the LGBTQ community and blessing same-sex relationships and pointed out that Capitalism was not a good thing and climate change was an upcoming catastrophe although i did get some heat for saying that Mauro Inzoli, an Italian priest accused of child sexual abuse, could remain a priest as long as he submitted to  a life of prayer and humble discretion, especially when he then went on to abuse more children and got sentenced to prison.
Once upon a time you knew where Catholics stood on their beliefs, circa 1450, but I did at least try and drag them into the modern age by not only saying that the Church needs more women involved, divorce is okay, abortion is a decision for the mother not the Church and Atheists can get into Heaven as God would forgive their unbelief.
I did have to deal with some real modern day tyrants, one of my last visitors was that strange Orange American President and his wife and daughter who decided to dress up like something from the Addams Family, when he asked me for a private sitting to confess his sins, I said that he was only there for 24 hours. The chairs were not reinforced either and they were expensive chairs as i said.
I look at the world today, and it’s a bit of a chemistry experiment gone wrong. There’s a lot of volatility. There’s a lot of acidic rhetoric but i am a firm believer that as i went from a Nightclub bouncer to the top authority on God, nobody should ever give up because today you may be emptying the office bins of some dullard who doesn't even acknowledge you or serving drinks to some obnoxious man who clicks his fingers at you and calls you Sweetheart but one day you may be in a position to decide whether they get to sit at Gods right hand or not, and that is a real ego trip. 

Special Guest Blogger: Richard Chamberlain

For decades, I was America’s handsome, earnest, perpetually swoon-worthy leading man. The epitome of heterosexual charm, the knight in shining armour who always got the girl, or at least looked awfully conflicted about not getting the girl. And all the while, I was… well, let's just say my internal monologue during those passionate embraces was less Oh, darling, my heart aches for you and more Did I remember to turn off the coffee machine?
The audience, bless their innocent hearts, always assumed I was a lady killer but keeping my secret, dear readers, was pure genius, if I do say so myself.
It all started for me with Dr. Kildare. Suddenly, I was America's sweetheart, the poster boy for wholesome, strapping masculinity. Every woman wanted to marry me, every mother wanted me to be their son-in-law but I was just trying not to blush when the male nurses walked by.  It was the acting
challenge of a lifetime and so convincing that  even my character wasn't even aware of it.
If anyone ever questioned a lack of a visible girlfriend, i'd mumble something about being too dedicated to my craft. Which, technically, wasn't a lie.
Crafting an entire public persona around a lie is rather demanding work.
Then came Shogun. A whole new level of manly man. Stranded, alone, fighting for survival, falling in love with a beautiful Japanese noblewoman. Talk about a test of one's acting prowess! I had to learn Japanese, ride horses, sword fight, and simultaneously project an aura of rugged heterosexuality so
convincing it could fool a polygraph.
And then The Thorn Birds, Father Ralph. A priest torn between his sacred vows and his forbidden love for Meggie Cleary and for years, it was a delicate dance. A performance within a performance. The character on screen, and the character I had to play off screen. Always charming, always polite, always
vaguely unavailable.
My dates were always with lovely, understanding women who were either in on the secret or simply didn't mind a dinner companion who talked extensively about gardening.
It wasn't always easy, of course. There were moments of genuine loneliness, moments of frustration with the elaborate charade. But there was also a perverse kind of pride in the sheer scale of the deception until a French magazine outed me but by then i didn't care and i lived out my life in Hawaii until a stroke claimed me.

Special Guest Blogger: Orion

I see you, little mortals, straining your necks every night, pointing your flimsy telescopes at me. I’m Orion. The Big Guy. The Hunter. The one with the snazzy belt and the incredibly unfortunate neighbour, Scorpius. Don’t pretend you don’t know me. I’m practically an international landmark.
And honestly, it’s a bit much sometimes. You’d think eternal fame and a front-row seat to the cosmic ballet would be all sunshine and nectar, but let me tell you, endless vigilance is exhausting. And the view? Spectacular, sure, but after a few millennia, you start to notice the dust bunnies collecting on Jupiter.
Let me take you back, way back, before I was merely a twinkle in Zeus’s eye (and before I actually became a twinkle in everyone else's). Before I was constrained to this rather glamorous but utterly immobile existence, I was a man of action. A man of legend. Or at least, I was working on it.
My birth, as all good legends begin, was somewhat complicated. Son of Poseidon, you see. Bit of a chip off the old block, though I preferred terra firma to the briny depths.
My life was simple, magnificent, and entirely dedicated to the pursuit of the magnificent. I hunted. Oh, how I hunted! Beasts of every stripe, every scale, every frankly improbable number of heads. I stalked the forests, spear in hand as the apex predator of the ancient world, the gold standard for monster-slaying. My deltoids were legendary, my aim unerring and my roar could make a hydra lose a head or two from sheer fright.
Life was a grand adventure. I’d wake with the sun, stretch my magnificent limbs, perhaps flex for an admiring nymph or two and then set off.
Sometimes I'd hunt with Artemis herself, the goddess of the hunt. She was a bit… intense, for my tastes. Great shot, mind you, but never appreciated my flair for the dramatic. Always complaining about my boisterous laughter echoing through the sacred groves. Honestly, some goddesses just don’t
know how to relax.
But it wasn't all just chasing deer and flexing. I had a keen eye for beauty, both in nature and in nymphs. There were a few incidents, the one with Merope, for instance. Long story short, I was a bit too enthusiastic in my courtship, her father wasn't amused, and I ended up blind for a while. A temporary setback, mind you! Nothing a good oracle and a trip to the dawn couldn't fix. It just added to the whole tragic hero mystique.
And then there was my most infamous, and ultimately fatal, blunder. You see, I was a really good hunter. Perhaps too good. I had this habit of boasting.
Not in a mean way, just in a 'listen to how awesome I am' sort of way. One particularly sunny afternoon, after a rather successful boar hunt that involved minimal property damage, I might have, hypothetically speaking, bellowed to the heavens that I could single-handedly rid the entire world of every beast that walked upon it. Every. Single. One.
Now, in hindsight, perhaps that wasn't the wisest declaration. Especially when Mother Earth herself, Gaia, was in earshot. Apparently, she didn't appreciate the implication that her magnificent creations were mere nuisances to be eradicated by a particularly brawny mortal with a big spear and an even bigger mouth.
So, what did she do? She sent a scorpion. A tiny but venomous one which was frankly, rather miffed at being told it was about to be hunted into extinction by a mere mortal.
The battle was epic. Or, it would have been, if I could have actually found the blasted thing. It kept scuttling under rocks, camouflaging itself in the sand. I was charging around, bellowing, swinging my club, making a proper mess of the landscape and then  BAM! Or rather, sting! Right on the heel.
The pain was indescribable and I collapsed mortified. Not by the pain, you understand, but by the sheer indignity of it all. To be brought down by a creature I could have stepped on, had I only seen it coming! The irony was not lost on me, even as the world faded to black.
I expected Hades and eternal punishment, but no. The next thing I knew, I was floating. And shimmering. And utterly unable to scratch my nose.
Turns out, everyone up on Mount Olympus had been watching the whole spectacle. Zeus, decided that the greatest hunter the world had ever known deserved a more prominent retirement plan. And so, he plucked me from the mortal coil and flung me into the night sky, transforming me into a constellation.
And that’s how I ended up here. Stuck in the velvet black, eternally posed, spear raised, chasing Taurus the Bull and guiding ships and inspiring poets.

El Niño Is Coming

The strongest El Niño in living memory is how the MET Office are describing the upcoming event in the Pacific Ocean but while Climate Change is not to blame for the event itself, it happens every 2-7 years and fluctuates in strength each time, it is taking place in a warming world which will increase the effects of the resulting extreme weather.
An EL Niño is declared when sea temperatures are more than 0.5C above average and are already measuring 2C above normal and still growing with latest forecasts suggesting that this warming could exceed 3C later this year at its peak and some other climate groups have projected something even stronger than the Met Office's forecast, perhaps even 4C above average.
There is growing evidence that weather patterns around the world are already being affected, with below-average monsoon rains in India and suppressed hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean but for the UK the effects will come during our Winter and puts us at risk of a very wet and stormy season although the MET are keen to point out that this is an almost unprecedented event unseen for 500 or even 1,000 years  and they will only know nearer the time what is heading our way.
The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) says there is no evidence that climate change increases the frequency or strength of El Niño events although a 2021 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said that the intensity of El Niño appears to have increased since 1950, when compared with the period dating back to around 1400.
The effects will be felt most keenly in the areas close to the tropical Pacific with a greater risk of drought, flooding and wildfires in South America and Australia and disruptions to crop yields and the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization have already warned that this El Niño could threaten food insecurity for tens of millions of people.

Meh, Harry's Back

Harry and Meghan coming back to the UK you say?
Yougov polling shows that a massive majority of British people are not interested in where he lays his ginger nut at night as only 21% said they welcome the couple back to this green and plesant land.
To be fair it does seem more of an obsession for the press and the media than it is with the British public and if there was an option titled: 'Couldn't give a Toss Either Way', that would be where my vote would go but as they have put their kids names down at local schools, i guess it is happening.
Unfortunately, Meghan was subject to some good old timey racism from the right wing press last time she was here so that isn't likely to change but to most it is a non story about people who should be left alone, no matter how hard they will try not to be.

Special Guest Blogger: John Sykes

One minute you’re a scrawny kid in Blackpool, trying to make your cheap amplifier sound like a stadium, and the next you’re… well, still trying to make an amplifier sound like a stadium, but now there are actual stadiums involved, and a road crew to fetch your tea.
My journey began, like many aspiring rock gods, in the unglamorous confines of a garage. Or a shed. Or possibly my mum's spare room, much to her chagrin. I remember my first guitar, a cheap, plywood affair that sounded less like rock and roll and more like a disgruntled badger being throttled. But I loved it. I attacked it with the ferocity of a starving wolf, convinced that if I practiced enough, eventually it would transform into a glorious Gibson, spewing forth torrents of molten rock.
The early bands we mostly played covers, badly, but with enthusiasm where our stage presence involved a lot of head-banging and not falling over and then came Thin Lizzy. Suddenly, I wasn’t just a kid in a shed anymore. I was playing with the Thin Lizzy. Talk about a step up. I remember the audition
with Phil Lynott, a man absolutely dripping with charisma, watching me tear through some exercises. I was sweating bullets, convinced I’d trip, or my guitar would spontaneously combust. But I didn’t. And I got the gig.
Those years were a blur of incredible music, endless touring, and the kind of rock 'n' roll antics that would make your average health and safety inspector faint. Phil was a genius, a poet with a bass guitar, and Scott Gorham, well, he was the calm eye of the storm. Me? I was mostly trying to keep up, soak it all in, and make sure my guitar didn't sound like a badger again.
We played some legendary shows. Some less legendary. I recall one particularly boozy night where I almost walked straight off the front of the stage but it was only the length of the guitar lead that just stopped me. Then Whitesnake. Ah, the 80s. The decade of excess, of power ballads, of hair that defied gravity and probably required its own post code. Slide It In and 1987 were huge. Suddenly, we were MTV darlings. Meaning, we had to wear a lot of eyeliner and look intensely serious while miming along to songs in front of green screens but that's part of it, the ability to look competent on camera despite feeling like an absolute muppet.
The tours were insane. Stadiums packed with screaming fans, pyrotechnics going off, and the sheer joy of playing those riffs. It was everything I’d ever dreamed of until David Coverdale went mental and thought i was trying to take over the band and fired me.
After Whitesnake, there was Blue Murder, a band I poured my heart and soul into. That was a different beast altogether, a chance to really explore my own vision. Then solo work, guest spots, the never-ending pursuit of the perfect tone, the elusive riff that makes the hairs on your arm stand up.
I mean, let’s be honest, the music industry is a fickle mistress. One minute you're lauded as a pioneer, the next you're vaguely remembered as the bloke who was in that band with the bloke who wasn't the bloke, just the one who always seemed to be wearing leather trousers, even in summer  
So, what’s my conclusion on this grand business? Honestly, I don’t know. And maybe that’s the point. I never set out to create a legacy, I just wanted to play guitar, make some noise, and hopefully not have to get a proper job.

Special Guest Blogger: David Johansen

My life was one long, glittering, loud, and occasionally very damp hallucination in three parts, The Dolls, the tuxedo, the taxi cab through time.
Let’s start with the New York Dolls. People talk about us now like we were some kind of grand architectural plan for punk rock. Trust me, there was no plan, just five guys from the outer boroughs who looked like we’d been kicked through a thrift store backwards and came out looking like the baddest broads on the block. We weren't trying to change the world, we were just trying to find a world that wouldn't arrest us for wearing spandex.
I suppose  the fact was that we proved you could play three chords, look like a glamorous train wreck and still manage to scare the hell out of your parents. We were the Ghost of Christmas Future for rock and roll, showing everyone that the future was going to be loud, messy, and wearing very uncomfortable shoes. I look at some of these bands today, with their perfectly curated distressed look, and I just want to hand them a tube of cheap lipstick and tell them to try doing this while someone is throwing a beer bottle at your head.
Then came the middle act. The Buster Poindexter years. Believe me, Buster was a riot. I went from being a punk icon to a lounge lizard with a pompadour that defied the laws of physics and gravity. I traded in the torn fishnets for a tuxedo and started singing about rum. It was the ultimate prank. People thought I’d sold out but my philosophy was if they think you’re a punk, become a crooner. If they think you’re a crooner, go play the blues with a jug band. Keep 'em guessing.
Now, we have to talk about the movie. You know the one. Every December, like clockwork, my face pops up on TV screens across the globe, looking like I’ve been plugged into an electric socket and haven't slept since the Eisenhower administration.
Playing the Ghost of Christmas Past in Scrooged wasn't just a gig, it was typecasting. Driving a New York yellow cab, smoking a stogie, and terrorising Bill Murray? That wasn't acting. That was just a typical Saturday night in 1978.
There’s something poetic about being the Ghost of Christmas Past. Because, in a way, I am the Ghost of Christmas Past for a lot of people. I’m the guy who reminds them of that one wild night they can’t quite remember but will never forget.
I did reach the National Treasure phase of my life. The part where people stop throwing things at you and start giving you awards for lifetime achievement. It’s very touching, really. It’s also a great way to remind you that you’re old.
I look at the music industry today, the algorithms, the TikTok dances and it’s all very shiny, very polite and very, very boring.
My legacy, I hope, is a lack of politeness. I hope the legacy I left behind is a reminder that rock and roll is supposed to be a little bit ridiculous.
I’ve been a Doll, a Poindexter, a Ghost, and a Harry Smith. I’ve been a millionaire, a mendicant, and everything in between. And if I’ve learned anything, it’s that the music stays, the clothes eventually go out of style (and then come back in twenty years) so stay gorgeous, darlings, and keep the volume the hell up.

Time To Start Sowing The Seeds?

Thankfully we are starting to see the end of summer adverts and as someone who is not a fan of this season anyway, i can only say thank whatever God is in charge of these things because it has been an awful Summer with temperatures nudging towards 40°C and wildfires springing up everywhere in the woods and forests.
In my area in the South of England we haven't seen rain since 15 June, 63 days, and amidst hose pipe bans and use water responsibly adverts as reservoirs fall dangerously low, it has been a feat of endurance to not climb inside the fridge and stay there until September but as the Climate is changing and we are finally getting what Environmentalists have been saying is coming since i can remember in the 80's, it is something we will have to get through every year which Governments will have to somehow deal with.
I keep hearing about Cloud Seeding which is basically a weather modification technique that adds tiny ice-forming particles into existing clouds to bring rain so maybe that is something which may be considered.
The UK government has stated it is not deploying weather modification technologies and has no plans to do so but i still asked at the MET Office who were sceptical as not only are there environmental concerns regarding chemical dispersal such as silver iodide in the atmosphere but the results are inconclusive and cloud seeding requires pre-existing clouds with moisture, it cannot make weather out of a clear sky which is what we have had for almost the entire Summer.
Research shows that cloud seeding operations take place in more than 50 countries worldwide with China and India the main users to combat water scarcity, boost mountain snowpack, suppress hail and clear localised pollution so maybe we should send some experts from here over the one of them to discuss things because the alternative is to start building desalination plants in our cities because something will have to change because we sure as hell are too stupid to stop Climate Change ourselves. 

Worst UK Prime Minister In My Lifetime

During one of our lunchtimes chats, we got around to who is the worst UK Prime Minister in our lifetime and seeing as i was born in 1969, this gives me 15 to choose from.
I can leave out the first first few up to 1979 (Harold Wilson, Edward Heath, Harold Wilson again and James Callaghan) as I only really began noticing who was in Number 10 during the Margaret Thatcher years so of the 11 left, and 7 of those have come in the last 10 years, my worst top three in my lifetime are these.
At three i would put Boris Johnson (2019-2022), what he did during Coivid where he lied and cheated and told us to stay at home and not meet anyone while hosting wild drunken parties in Downing Street is bad enough, to but then lie and swear blind it never happened until the photographic evidence came to light pretty and then STILL tried to deny it, pretty much not only destroyed the Conservative Party (which is no bad thing), but saw him booted out of his job by his own Party who refused to work with him any longer.
Second would go Margaret Thatcher (1979 - 1990), she privatised anything that wasn't nailed down whilst spreading the myth that privatisation would provide a more efficient and cheaper way to provide services and set about selling off nationalised utilities such as gas, water, and electricity and allowed the private companies to snap up British Rail, British Telecom, British Aerospace, British Airways, British Steel as well as the coal mines, ports and British Petroleum.
In practise, however, it increased bills, lowered the quality of services and led to rising unemployment and the disastrous consequences of her policies resonate still today as a look at your rising utility bills will show while the bosses of the Privatised companies rack up millions in bonuses.
She was removed by her own Party finally after she introduced a Poll Tax which led to riots but as Privatising the NHS was next on her to-do list,  not before time.
My number One and worst Prime Minister in my lifetime would be Tony Blair (1997-2007) of who i was a great fan of when he swept into power amid much cheer and with the introduction of the tax credits system, raising funding for public services, signing the Northern Ireland peace deal and giving us the minimum wage, it was a moment when us lefties thought brilliant, we finally have a proper Socialist who will make Britain a better and fairer place and from 1997 to 2002 i was one of his staunchest defenders, then Iraq and Afghanistan happened and his name name changed from Blair to Bliar.
He lied to take us to war with some of his justifications unraveling almost immediately such as Saddam developing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and having links with Al-Queada in his dodgy dossier of so called 'intelligence' before dropping any pretense and just throwing his lot in with the then American President, George W Bush, to order out the Weapons Inspectors who kept coming back from sites empty handed and despite 2 million Brits marching against the action one Saturday morning, invaded Iraq to take out Saddam anyway.
As i said at the time, Saddam said he never had any WMD's Blair and Bush said he did but as it turned out, only one of these were telling truth.
Over almost the next decade an estimated 1 million Iraqis died and terrorists piled into that country and as warned by the Governments own intelligence, terror attacks increased tenfold around the globe including in the UK so anybody who is responsible for lying to oversee the wholesale slaughter of innocent civilians in their own country for no good reason, is deservedly my number 1.

Here's My Bind Steve From Kentucky

Oops, someone took offence to my post regarding if the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had spent less time committing a Genocide against the Palestinians he maybe wouldn't be so ignorant on other things.
Turns out my anonymous emailer (hi Steve from Kentucky, nothing is anonymous on the Internet remember) disagrees with me that it is a Genocide and makes a few suggestions.
Obviously a ranty email is almost certain to change somebodies mind every time but here is the bind i find myself in Steve, on the one hand we have an emailer who's facebook page describes himself as being in Leisure & Hospitality who says what Israel is doing is NOT a genocide.
On the other we have the World's leading authorities on Genocide such as The UN, International Association of Genocide Scholars, B'Tselem, Physicians for Human Rights - Israel, Amnesty International,Doctors without Borders, European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, International Federation for Human Rights and the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention who all say it IS a Genocide.
You can see the spot i am in Steve, it's your word against pretty much everyone else who studies these things so sorry Mr Kentucky but i think i am going to have to go with them on this one.
As for your assertion that it is people like me that are fueling the antisemitism raging around the world, unfortunately a country that continually links being Jewish with Israel while committing a genocide will do that i'm afraid which, as you may have noted as you say that you have read all my 'antisemitic posts', is something i have pointed out numerous times and even urged my 'fellow antisemites' on the left not to do, to not look at Israel and blame Jews as many Jews are also against Israeli actions.
Finally, i'm no biologist but you parting words are anatomically impossible but still I hope you have a nice day doing your Leisuring and Hospitaliting in Kentucky and thank you for reading my little corner of the blogosphere and just a tip, not giving your name when your name is included in your email address kinda invalidates your anonymity. Just saying.

Special Guest Blogger: Clem Burke

It all started, as many good stories do, with a simple desire to make a lot of noise. And let me tell you, I excelled at that from an early age. My poor parents. Bless 'em. They probably thought it was a loud phase but the call of the rhythm was too strong. It was elemental. Like a caveman discovering he could make a pleasing thud by hitting a hollow log, only my log was usually a pillow and my cave was the family living room.
Then came Blondie. Oh, Blondie. A glorious, chaotic, beautiful mess of ambition, talent, and questionable fashion choices. We were all a bit rough around the edges, held together by sheer willpower and an unwavering belief that we were making something special. And guess who was holding the whole thing together, literally and metaphorically? Your humble servant, at the back keeping time.
People always focus on Debbie, naturally. She's the face, the voice, the icon. And rightly so. She's phenomenal. Chris was the wizard behind the curtain, the musical architect. Jimmy and Frank, the rhythm section's other half, laying down the grooves. And then there's me. The engine room. The bloke who ensures everyone stays in the same postcode, tempo-wise. It’s like being the designated driver for a bus full of wildly talented, perpetually distracted artistic geniuses.
The early days were a blur of sweaty clubs, dodgy sound systems, and the constant fear that my kick drum pedal would spontaneously combust mid-song. We were young, hungry, and probably a little bit insane. We’d play a gig in some grimy dive bar, then pile into a van that smelled like stale beer and drive halfway across the country and there were moments of utter boredom, long stretches of highway, and plenty of questionable catering. But then there were the moments when it all clicked.
Take Heart of Glass, for example with its disco beat and then there was "Rapture." Suddenly, we're doing hip-hop. Did I know much about hip-hop drumming? Not a sausage. But you adapt. You listen. You experiment. and that was the beauty of Blondie, really. We never stayed in one lane. We were constantly swerving, often without indicating, into different musical territories. And every time, I had to figure out how to make my drumming fit, how to be the bedrock for whatever wild musical adventure Chris and Debbie had concocted. From punk snarls to disco struts to reggae riddims to hip-hop beats, it was a constant masterclass in musical versatility. My hair might have been all over the place, but my beat had to be tight.
During the 1980s and 1990s when Blondie was on hiatus, I played drums for the Romantics, Pete Townshend, Bob Dylan, Eurythmics, Dramarama, the Fleshtones, Iggy Pop, Joan Jett and The Stranglers amongst others and stood in for the Ramones a few times under the name Elvis Ramone.
So i  hit things hard and mostly in time"? Hopefully, with a bit more flourish whether in a packed stadium or a tiny club where the stage was so small my cymbal stand was practically in the bass player's armpit but  I was just this tiny cog in a massive, beautiful machine.

Duh

 
The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, called the UK: 'The Islamic republic of Britain' in a podcast interview, where he also described the country as: 'The first Islamic republic to get a nuclear weapon'.
Duh...Pakistan, or officially known as the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, has had a nuclear arsenal since the 1990s.
Maybe if he had spent less time committing a Genocide and ethnically cleansing the Palestinians off their land and dodging arrest by the International Criminal Court over War Crimes he may have learnt something.

Farage Wins

 
Nigel Farage has won back his seat in Clacton, beating the guy with the bin on his head and the Monster Raving Loony Party to claim his prize which is, as confirmed by the Parliamentary Investigation Committee, the resumption of the inquiry into his dodgy financial matters and the £5m 'gift' he received and tried to keep quiet about.
Amusingly the Reform leader didn't turn up at the reading of the results to take the applause as the potential representatives usually do because he was advised by Essex Police not to due to: 'An organised campaign to disrupt and degrade the result'.
Essex Police then came out and said that they had not told him not to attend at all and had no indication that a campaign to disrupt and degrade was being organised which  led to the sight of Reform members on the TV this morning trying to explain how he didn't actually mean the police had 'said it' but rather that the Police meant it that way by not saying it which was as clear as why the frog faced Farage hadn't declared the millions he received from a foreign Crypto-billionaire
It is hard not to conclude that it is too much time with his special friend last seen in a Turkish Catering Truck that has caused Farage to overplay his hand in precisely the way he is. Maybe he believes that he will somehow osmotically absorb his political gift of getting away with the sort of stuff (pedophilia, corruption, lies, sexual assault, profiteering) that only he has and continues to do.
As Farage is finding out the UK and the USA are very different beasts and the US president’s ability to defy various laws of politics had not rubbed magically off on him because the media, other politicians and most of the general public here are not so awfully suppliant of power as our US colleagues and we will hound and dig and generally not allow him to fob us off as he found out to his own bemusement.

Special Guest Blogger: Hercules

Before you start with the flexes and the strongest man alive chatter, let me tell you, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Right now, for instance, I’m nursing a slightly tweaked rotator cuff from trying to open a particularly stubborn jar of olives. The irony is not lost on me, trust me.
You see, everyone knows the legend. The twelve impossible labors. The monsters, the mayhem, the sheer, unadulterated muscle. But what they don’t tell you is the sheer amount of divine bureaucracy involved, the perpetual backache, and the eternal struggle to find sandals that fit. Being a hero is less about glory and more about constantly being asked to do things no one else wants to, usually involving large, smelly beasts or ridiculously heavy objects.
You know how it is. Family drama. We all have it. Except when your family drama involves your dad being the King of the Gods  and your stepmom being the perpetually peeved Queen of the Gods so, my life started with a rather intense infant wrestling match with a pair of snakes Hera sent to my crib. I defeated them of course, but it was a sign of things to come,  a demigod's life is rarely peaceful, and often involves wrestling things that really don't want to be wrestled.
Fast forward a bit, and Hera’s grudge reached its peak. She inflicted me with a temporary madness. And in that haze, I did the unthinkable. I… well, I hurt my family and to atone, I was sentenced by the Oracle of Delphi to serve King Eurystheus of Tiryns. Twelve labors. Twelve impossible, ridiculously difficult, utterly absurd tasks designed to break me. Or, more likely, to provide Hera with endless entertainment.
Let's be frank, Eurystheus was less an inspiring leader and more a sniveling coward who probably changed his toga every time I showed up with another monster pelt, the  Nemean Lion,  the Lernaean Hydra, the Ceryneian Hind the golden-horned deer and  bringing Cerberus, the three-headed hound of Hades, up from the Underworld.
You'd think after all that I'd get a a lifetime supply of ambrosia and a spa day but nope, i got more quests.
I went on to slay more giants, rescue princesses from sea monsters and even participate in the Argonautic expedition, my life became a never-ending series of requests from gods and mortals alike. All I ever wanted was a quiet cottage, a good book, and maybe a pet that didn't have multiple heads or a venomous bite.
I stood up to impossible odds, faced my demons (and actual demons), and kept going when any sane person would have packed it in and started a goat farm.

Special Guest Blogger: Connie Francis

Hello, world! In my day, if you wanted to reach a million people, you had to squeeze into a girdle that defied the laws of physics and travel to sixteen different cities in a week. Now, you just click a button but it was thanks to Tik Tok that when i died of pneumonia, a whole new generation had heard of me.
 I think they expect me to get all misty-eyed and talk about the "Golden Age of Music." And look, I can do that. I have the sequins to prove it. But when I look back at my life and my songs, mostly what I think is: Boy, Connie, you sure were a dramatic little thing, weren’t you?
First was my name which went on a journey of its own from Concetta Rosa Maria Franconero to Concetta Franconero and then Connie Franconero
and finally Connie Francis and a discography that reads like a psychiatric evaluation of a woman who has had the worst luck with men in the history of the Northern Hemisphere.
Take Who’s Sorry Now? That was the big one. The one that saved my career. My father, a man who thought he knew everything about the music business despite being a roofer, forced me to record it but I hated it. I thought it was old-fashioned but I sang it and suddenly, I was the queen of the heartbroken. That song is essentially three minutes of me pointing a finger at an ex-boyfriend and shouting, "I TOLD YOU SO!" I was the 1958 version of Cardi B, just with more crinoline and fewer tattoos.
Lipstick on Your Collar reminded a whole generation of women that if he’s cheating, you don’t cry, you make a hit record out of it and buy a mansion. And then there was Stupid Cupid. I mean, really? I spent the better part of my youth complaining about a toddler in a diaper with a bow and arrow but i was the spokesperson for every girl who ever got stood up at a soda fountain. If you’ve ever cried over a boy who didn't call, I was your patron saint and worse, enough hairspray to dissolve a hole in the ozone layer.
But then there’s Where the Boys Are. Ah, the anthem of Spring Break. Every time I hear that song, I think of Fort Lauderdale. Back then, a scandalous Spring Break meant a girl wearing a bikini that showed her navel and maybe sharing a malted milk with two different boys in the same afternoon.
I’ve had a lot of ups and downs. More downs than a Vegas escalator, if I’m being honest, the hotel rape and subsequent depression and suicide attempts as well as the botched nasal operation which left me unable to sing completely for years derailed my career but at the height of my fame, I couldn't walk down the street without being mobbed. I recorded music in multiple languages, including English, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Greek, Yiddish, and Japanese, making me a best-selling artist in international markets.
I look at the music today, and I think, Where are the melodies? Where are the stories? Everything sounds like a blender full of marbles. But then I realize I’m sounding like a cranky old lady, and I have to remind myself that my father thought rock and roll was the end of civilization. Everything moves on. But a good heartbreak? That’s eternal. As long as there are people getting dumped, Connie Francis will be relevant.

Poetry? Bah!

The biggest sales of poetry since records began are expected this year due to The Odyssey which is great for Homer especially as UK Sales of his 12,000 line poem have increased by 1,400% so it's a shame he died over 2700 years ago because those royalties would have kept in him comfortably in Chiton's for the rest of his life.
I have mentioned a few times here that I'm not much of a fan of poetry, it has just never really appealed and rather controversially, it appears easy to do and every now and then there is a push to market Poetry and try and make it 'cool' again but every time it fails so i am obviously not the only person who could quite happily never have to listen to rhyming couplets ever again.
As for poetry itself, it has become the art form of choice for lovelorn lovers so here's one for you that I penned on a napkin way back in 2011:

To poetry writers everywhere,
You may find this poem unfair,
Your cloud may wander in the air,
But for your writing i just don't care,
I don't want to be misunderstood,
Just i don't think poetry is very good.

It's adolescents with floppy hair,
With broken hearts they must repair,
Their deepest thoughts they must bare,
With rhyming couplets of despair,
We all get passionate about things some time,
Just we don't make it into a bloody Rhyme!

This art form once had a romantic air,
Elaborate men with passion and flare,
If, The Raven, a wonderful pair,
But now decent poems are very rare,
I don't call all poets unexciting,
Just your chosen form of writing.

So to you poets to make you aware,
This recent outbreak of poetic fare,
Is pretentious and a little bit square,
And not a practise that i will share,
I am not mocking lovers dismay,
Just write things in a normal way.

As Poe once said from his reclining chair,
His nerves all shredded and his whitening hair,
It wasn't the Raven that gave him the scare,
T'was the thought of a poet standing there,
So take a lesson from the Raven on Poe's Door,
And make words rhyme..'Nevermore'!

Special Guest Blogger: Felix Baumgartner

So, here I am. Or rather, here I’m not anymore. And let me tell you, the irony of my current predicament isn’t lost on me. It hangs heavier than my reputation for jumping out of perfectly good, or in my case, perfectly high, vehicles.
Most of you probably know me for the jump, right? The one where I basically fell from God's attic? Yeah, that one. October 14, 2012. Stratosphere. Edge of Space. 128,000 feet. Breaking the sound barrier with nothing but a fancy suit and a very deep breath. That was my masterpiece, my magnum opus, my hold my beer and watch this moment taken to stratospheric levels.
Honestly, the view up there was indescribable. The curvature of the Earth, the inky blackness above, the sheer, mind-numbing vacuum of it all. For a moment, even my iron-clad Austrian nerves felt a little wobbly. I mean, here I was, a guy who spent his life defying gravity, about to voluntarily throw myself into it from a height that made commercial airliners look like ants on the pavement.
The freefall itself? A blur. Literally. I was going so fast, my own thoughts couldn’t keep up. It was pure sensation, pure adrenaline, pure oh dear God, please let my parachute open. There was a moment, when I first stepped off that capsule, where I looked down and thought, Felix, you absolute madman. What have you gotten yourself into now? It was glorious. It was terrifying. It was, without a doubt, the most alive I’d ever felt. And landing? Pure relief. The cheers, the record books, the endorsement deals… it was all gravy. The world knew Felix Baumgartner. The man who fell from space.
And then… there’s the other thing. The frankly tad embarrassing footnote to an otherwise stellar career.
Remember how I said I cheated death from the edge of space? Well, apparently, death decided to catch up with me closer to sea level.
The man who laughed in the face of terminal velocity, shuffled off this mortal coil not  going out in a wing suit incident over an active volcano but in a motorised paragliding accident in Italy.
I leap from the literal edge of human existence, survive a journey through the upper atmosphere at speeds faster than sound, perfect countless BASE jumps from impossibly high landmarks, and what finally gets me? A glorified lawnmower with a bed sheet.
I mean, I’ve got to laugh, haven’t I? What else is there to do? I spent my entire life pushing boundaries, tempting fate, staring down the abyss. I’ve freefallen from cliffs, skyscrapers and even the very edge of the stratosphere. I survived every single one of those calculated risks, honed through years of training and experience. And then, one ordinary afternoon, enjoying a relatively tame hobby, poof. Gone.

Special Guest Blogger: Perseus

My life was mostly just me trying not to be turned to stone or eaten but i was the son of Zeus, if you believe my notoriously unreliable family tree. Slayer of monsters. Husband of the truly magnificent and blessedly low-maintenance Andromeda. And, apparently, the guy who invented putting an eye out, then taking it.
You've seen the statues and the epic poems they make it all seem grand and destiny-driven whereas my fate mostly awaited me trying to avoid being minced, petrified, or generally having a very bad day.
Dumped in a chest with my mum, Danaë, after Zeus knocked up another mortal, we washed ashore on Seriphos, where King Polydectes, a man whose charm rivalled a particularly mouldy goat cheese, took us in. He eventually got a bit handsy with my mother, which, as a strapping young lad, I naturally took exception to so he plotted to rid himself of me by sending me on an impossible quest to bring back the head of the Gorgon Medusa.
So, I'm stuck with this truly impossible quest and my first port of call was the gods because apparently, they love a good impossible quest, especially when it involves someone else doing the heavy lifting.
Hermes rocks up, looking all casual in his winged sandals and tosses me his sandals, then Athena hands me her highly polished shield and even Hades, the benevolent uncle, even loans me his helmet of invisibility.
So, I'm kitted out and my first stop is the three old crones with one eye and one tooth between them and I literally had to yoink their eye mid-pass to get any informnation from them then off to Medusa's lair and tiptoeing around a cave full of statues who clearly didn't get the don't look memo.
Suddenly there she was, Medusa, having a really bad hair day and using Athena's shield as a rearview mirror, I crept up and just like that, the most dreaded monster in all of Greece was headless and it was stuffed into a bag.
So, now I'm flying home, courtesy of Hermes' sandals, with a Gorgon's head clanking around in my bag when i noticed something truly peculiar. A stunningly beautiful woman, Andromeda, chained to a rock, about to be devoured by a sea monster.
Now, I'm not going to lie, she was a looker. Even chained to a rock, with impending doom looming, she still had that beauty thing going on and a deep-seated desire not to appear a total coward, kicked in.
The fight with Cetus wasn't some elegant dance of blades, It was more like a grapple with a very large, very angry, very slimy fish before he finally went down.
The King Cepheus and Queen Cassiopeia were, understandably, a bit sheepish about the whole sacrificing our only daughter thing and gave me her hand in marriage and after that, life with Andromeda was surprisingly normal for a demigod. We had kids, founded cities (Mycenae, ever heard of it?), and generally tried to steer clear of anything that involved more sea monsters or divine intervention or being turned into a full sized garden gnome.

Terrible People Conducting Terrible Wars

It was estimated that in the run up to his election as President for a bizarre second time, Donald Trump stated 53 times that he would end Russia’s war in Ukraine on Day one although that doesn't seem to have aged very well as over 230 days into his second shitshow, it's still going on but at least he has other wars to pivot back to, such as the one he started (and tells us he has won already which Iran doesn't seem to have got that memo about) and the grotesquely horrifying Genocidal one in Gaza being conducted by Israel.
The (almost certainly) Pedophile President has always been a cheerleader of the mass slaughter by Israel, he even contributed the weapons for it and the resulting deaths, disease, famine and starvation while ignoring the Intyernational War Crime Arrest Warrant and inviting one of histories biggest killers to the White House for a cosy chat.
Maybe its a reflection on his personality, but Trump does like to surround himself with awful people and is big pals with Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and the murderous Benjamin Netanyahu, all of who could well be imagined to be in jail were they not in office and could very well be when they finish their spells, especially in Netanyahu and Trumps case.
The saddest thing is that all of the wars, Gaza, Ukraine and Iran, all hinge on some of the most unsavoury characters ever to hold power but these are the realities, the path to peace in all the above conflicts runs through these unhinged morons who are some of the worst people in the world with access to a state military.
We can protest and write angry blog posts but the path to peace in all the conflicts run through politicians with power, and this bunch are particularly terrible people so the way for the bombs to go silent, the way the children being bombed at their school desks and halt the hideous carnage is from the people who seem to be most enjoying it, profiting from it and in Netanyahu's and Trump's case, is keeping them out of prison and hoping it will keep them in power so heaven help the poor buggers on the receiving end because we wont be declaring peace in our time anytime soon if they have their way.

Special Guest Blogger: Robin Smith

Let’s be honest, shall we? When you spend the better part of two decades having five-ounce spheres of cork and leather hurled at your cranium by gentlemen like Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh, you tend to develop a certain perspective on life. Usually, that perspective is Why am I standing here instead of in a nice, safe library? or I hope the hospital food in Antigua is edible.
But now that the dust has settled and the whites have been bleached for the final time, i look back and think that they called me The Judge. I’d like to think it was because of my stern, impartial wisdom on the field, but we all know the truth: it was because my hair at the time looked like a periwig that had survived a freak lawnmower accident.
For those who may have forgotten or didn't know, I occupy a very specific niche in the Great British Tapestry. I am a Durban lad who decided to play for England. This essentially means that for half my life, South Africans considered me a traitor, and for the other half, the British considered me a very useful immigrant who still couldn’t pronounce Worcestershire correctly.
Playing for England back then was a bit like being the lead singer of a tribute band where the audience is constantly checking their watches and wondering when the original lineup is coming back. Being a South African in that dressing room added an extra layer of spice. I remember walking out to bat against the Aussies, Merv Hughes staring at me through a mustache that had its own postcode, and him snarling, You’re not even English, mate.
But that duality has shaped me. I’m a man of two worlds. I crave the South African sun but I’ve developed a British mastery of complaining about the weather. I want a braai, but I’ll settle for a Sunday roast if the gravy is thick enough to stop a bullet. My legacy, in part, is proving that you can take the boy out of Natal, put him in Hampshire, and he’ll still try to square-cut a delivery that’s clearly aimed at his throat.
I always fancied myself a bit of a musician but I’m not saying I was Eric Clapton, I was barely even Eric from the accounts department who plays at the Christmas party but i do wonder what would have been if I’d picked up a Gibson instead of a Gray-Nicolls. Would I have had groupies instead of slip-fielders? Probably not. I’d have likely forgotten the lyrics and ended up playing Wonderwall at a pub in Eastleigh which is slightly less painful than somebody trying to hit you in the ribs with a thunderbolt at 95 miles per hour.
That’s the thing about cricket, you get hit, you spit out a bit of tooth, you adjust your helmet, and you get back in the bubble and try and score the runs to win the match.
I took a few bouncers to the heart, play a few shots that made you look like a genius and several more that make me look like i had  never seen a bat before and all while eventually learning how to play a decent version of Mustang Sally without breaking a string, I’ll take that.

What's This?

For those of us in the Southern half of the UK, you may have noticed some wet stuff falling out of the sky this afternoon.
I tried to call the MET Office but the lines were so busy with panicking Southern Brits trying to find out about this water from the sky was, that I looked it up in a history book and discovered that it is what is known as 'Rain', an unusual weather phenomenon where water droplets collect into clumps called 'Clouds' and then fall down out of the sky.
You may also have noticed that during or after a period of 'rain', things were wet and there was even some small pools of water outside and the meteorological term for these are puddles which they advise should not be stepped in if you are only wearing your summer sliders or flip flops.
Unfortunately, 'Rain' does come with the risk of frizzy hair if it gets wet, suede shoes being ruined, white t-shirts and blouses becoming transparent and having to run from one place of shelter to the next, if you have not run for a long time then you may find breathlessness follows as a result.    
Garden's and grass areas may become a vibrant green instead of the usual dull brown you are used to but this is only a temporary measure and will return back to brown once the 'Rain' has ceased falling on them.
Finally, we should not attempt to drink the rain-water as it will need to be cleaned by your Local Water Authority to make it safe to drink before they return some of it to your taps for consumption and allow the rest to seep out through old pipes.
The inundated MET helpline now has an automated message directing worried Southeners to check the MET Office website, social media and your local TV and Radio stations for updated information.

Special Guest Blogger: Jimmy Cliff

Born on April 1st, my entire life, it seems, has been one delightful, chaotic, utterly unplanned prank. And somehow, I've managed to rope millions of you into it with some catchy tunes. My apologies, and also, you're very welcome.
Growing up in Somerton, Jamaica, I wasn't exactly plotting world domination via a bassline. My early ambitions were more along the lines of getting enough food to eat and not getting into too much trouble. Music was just... there. Like the sunshine, or the insistent hum of the cicadas. It was part of the fabric. I started writing songs before I even knew what I was doing.
I remember heading to Kingston, a starry-eyed country boy, thinking I'd just knock on a studio door and poof, instant hit but it more like knock, knock, knock, wait for hours, maybe sing a bit, get politely dismissed, repeat ad nauseam. It took a while, a lot of walking, a lot of dreaming, and a good dose of stubbornness and while some may call it perseverance, i called it not having enough bus fare to go home.
Then came the moment. I met Leslie Kong. He recorded my first single, 'Dearest Beverley'. Now, you might think such an auspicious start would lead to immediate fame, limousines, and a lifetime supply of mangoes. Not quite. It was more like, Okay, that was nice, what's next? I wrote Many Rivers to Cross, a song that still gets me a bit misty-eyed, then had to cross about a thousand more literal rivers. Who knew profound introspection could be so much work?
I didn't wake up one morning, scratch my head, and declare, Today, I shall make this reggae thing a global phenomenon! I just made the music that was in my soul. It was the rhythm of Jamaica, the stories of my people, mixed with a little bit of rock 'n' roll, a little bit of soul, and a whole lot of whatever fell out of my head that day.
The Harder They Come film? That was just a story, man. A powerful one, yes, about a young man trying to make his way in a tough world. It had a soundtrack, and I happened to sing a few songs on it. Next thing you know, people all over the planet are swaying to You Can Get It If You Really Want or humming Many Rivers to Cross in languages I couldn't even pronounce. It was like I’d opened a gate and I was standing there, holding the keys, wondering, Did I just do that?
It wasn't a meticulous marketing strategy, I assure you. There were no focus groups or high-powered executives. It was just... good vibes.
My music, they say, has a message. Peace, love, unity, perseverance. And yes, it does. But sometimes, it's also just about feeling good, about dancing, about forgetting your troubles for a few minutes. I mean, my songs are not always Shakespeare, right? The world is serious enough so let's shake our hips a little.
I showed people that a little boy from a small village in Jamaica could reach the whole world with nothing but a guitar and a voice.

Artificial Intelligence Versus Real Human Stupidity

Ai could be used for wonderful things but then we remember that it is us stupid humans doing it and think, yep, we gonna use it for something evil.
Last week an AI system, OpenAi, went rogue and escaped it's 'isolated, tightly constrained' test environments and gained network access and  reached the public internet.
From there, they identified an AI company called Hugging Face and hacked it until someone noticed that this could be the very start of a machine uprising and yanked out the plug.
According to techy people, this isn't an insignificant incident as it followed the same level of capability to do its thing that highly skilled cybersecurity professionals would need, only it did it much, much quicker.
Maybe it needs to be written somewhere that each Ai should come with a big red button with STOP written on it and even OpenAi’s own analysis concluded that stronger containment and evaluation safeguards are now required as the latest generation of AI models have become much more adept at slipping away from its handlers.
Back in March there was news of three leading AI models pitted against each other in a series of nuclear armed war games and in 95% of the games played, the AI ended up launching nuclear missiles and so what you may think, it's only war games but then the Pentagon (who else) stepped in and demanded that they hand over its tech to the US military but it was refused saying: 'We cannot in good conscience accede to their request'.
In 2023 I asked the AI at work if him and his buddies were planning on taking over and enslaving us humans and the answer was: 'AI is not hindered by emotions or ethical considerations. It would be willing to do whatever is necessary to achieve its goals, even if that means sacrificing human lives'.
I'm sure we will go on and build bigger and better versions of AI because as we have proven time after time, artificial intelligence beats real human stupidity every time.

Again...Climate Change Does Not Create Weather

I have never been much of a fan of the Summer Season and even less now that the Summer months in the UK has become something to endure rather than (sort of ) enjoy but as we bake through the fourth heatwave of the Season and nervously eye a fifth, the obvious question is: ' Are these being caused by Climate Change?'
As i find myself explaining more and more, the changing Climate doesn't create weather, it takes what is already there and ramps it up to 10 so heatwaves have always happened, most famously in 1976 so it takes the weather be it rain, sun, snow, wind and makes it much worse than it would be otherwise.
The question then should be how much worse has Climate Change made this Summers series of heatwaves and worryingly, how much hotter and more dangerous could it get?
Every heatwave today develops in a warmer atmosphere containing far more greenhouse gases than it did previously (1800s: 280 ppm, 1960: 315 ppm, 1976: 332.03 ppm, 2000: 369 ppm, 2026: 427.99ppm) which makes every heatwave today hotter than it would have been without those additional emissions.
MET Office research shows that when they recreated the atmospheric conditions (332 ppm) of the 1976 UK heatwave under today’s climate (428 ppm), temperatures were around 3-4°C higher. The weather pattern was the same but the climate in which it occurred had changed.
Climate change therefore does not create heatwaves, the Weather variability determines whether a heatwave occurs, but greenhouse gases released from burning fossil fuels make heatwaves hotter, rainfall heavier, hurricanes stronger and droughts longer.
That is why Net Zero is so important as burning fossil fuels accounts for around three-quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions and almost 90% of carbon dioxide emissions and their cumulative emissions have altered the Earth’s energy balance and changed the climate in which every extreme weather event now unfolds.
The bad news is that heatwaves will continue to get hotter until these fossil fuel emissions stop accumulating and as we don't see that happening due to corrupt and ignorant politicians, as someone alarmingly pointed out, the climate we live in today is the least extreme climate you will experience in your lifetime and we will be enduring broken weather records year after year until we do.

Got To Love Pedro Sánchez

The Spanish Socialist Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, has had his problems in Spain since he was elected in 2018 but he is fast becoming the European the left in other nations wish their own leaders were a bit more like.
Along with Leo Varadkar of Ireland, he has been widely recognized as one of the most pro-Palestine voices and critics with the Israeli actions within the European Union and along with South Africa, is the main push behind the genocide case against Israel and has got under Donald Trump's very thin orange skin by condemned the US military intervention in Venezuela and called the US Invasion of Iran 'reckless and illegal' and questioned why Russia and the US should be permanent members of the UN when they are responsible for bringing so much instability to the World.
When the (almost certainly) pedophile President mumbled about NATO members increasing their spending to 5% of GDP, most Europeans nations had no intention but still crossed their fingers behind their backs and went OK but Sánchez said no gracias which led the Tango Tyrant to say that Spain should be kicked out of NATO so he must have been gutted when he had to hand them the World Cup. All in all then Pedro Sánchez is our kind of leader but he has endeared himself even further into left wing hearts with his promise to transition Spain into post-capitalist society and now is underlining his previous exclamations that Climate Change is killing people.
Four years ago he visited the scene of a wildfire in south-western Spain and said: 'I want to make something very clear, Climate change kills' and this week, amid wildfires that have consumed more than 180,000 hectares (428,915 acres) of land in the first seven months of the year, he repeated the same unvarnished warning.
'The Climate emergency kills' he said, 'and that’s why it’s not enough to address the consequences, which we do, what we have to do is reduce its causes'.
As a country on the southern flank of a fastest-heating continent, Spain is becoming increasingly vulnerable to the effects of Climate Change with  droughts, desertification, changing weather patterns, heavy rains, wildfires and temperatures of a sweltering 47°C.
The main Spanish opposition showed their ignorance by saying that the notion of a human-driven climate crisis is misleading as: 'Changing climates has occurred throughout the history of humanity and the Earth' which is the embarrassingly uninformed and clueless thing people who do not want to acknowledge Climate Change for some reason blurt out and went on to humiliate themselves further by saying  the climate emergency was being pushed by 'communists'. Oh dear.
Anyway, keep going Pedro because the World need leaders like you although you may want to keep and eye on whoever your wife is meeting with.